Bodor Ferenc: Coffee-Houses - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1992)

Pasaréti

There was once a well-tended garden behind the stop for the 5 bus, with folding wooden chairs, small tables, and lonely, aging reactionaries. At the counter gentlewomen come down in the world grew pale and wan from the reek of the fifties. Those times are over, the garden furniture is gone, profit predominates. Customers are enveloped in a medley of odours, aromatic tobacco smoke and intoxicating after-shave lotions. We pass embarrassedly by the sadly uncurving counter behind which uncurving shelves are aligned. Some drinks are dispensed from bottles tipped upside down, like in fusions. The pace here is deliberate and leisurely—luckily. In the back the place reminds us of a doctor’s anteroom, the pianist plays only in our memories. Here conversation centres round sound business ventures, reasonably priced trips to the Canary Islands, and nobody is bothered by the absentminded twirling of ignition keys.

129 PASARÉTI ÚT, II.

PASARÉTI

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